The Doctrine of Self-positing and Receptivity in Kant's Late ...

iii. Historical and Facultative Tensions:
The movement exhibited between the analytic and the ontological levels as well
as the unfolding of the three ontological moments also make the Selbstsetzungslehre a
fertile ground from which to also ask whether or not Kant finally addresses one of the
most common critiques launched by his contemporaries: how is it possible that the two
main cognitive sources of the subject accord with one another in the synthetic unity of
apperception, considering the heterogeneity of their functions and forms of
representation? 105 Lacking an account of how spontaneity and receptivity accord – rather
than just providing the proof that their unity is necessary if experience is to be possible
(per negationem opposite) – was also part and parcel related to other charges against
Kant's KrV at the time. 106 The heterogeneity of the faculties and their respective forms of
representation had also lead to a degree of ambiguity as to the meaning, status and
ultimate cognitive value of what is designated as ―object‖ at the different systematic
levels of Kant's position; in the KrV different senses of the concept of object appear:
object of intuition, object of cognition, object in general, thing itself [Sache selbst],
transcendental object, and of the thing in itself (in addition less direct references, such as
105 A clear statement of this problem is found in a letter Kant addressed to Herz, May 26,
1789, where he paraphrases Maimon's identification of it: ―How do I explain the
possibility of agreement between a priori intuitions and my a priori concepts, if each has
its specifically different origins, since this agreement is given as a fact but the legitimacy
or the necessity of the agreement of two such heterogeneous manner of representation is
incompatible‖ (Ak: 2:50. Zweig, 313).
106 We find that form of argument in § 16 of the ―Analytic‖ in the KrV.
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